Sunday You Learn How to Box

$11.99

Sunday You Learn How to Box by Bil Wright

2013, paperback

Fourteen-year-old Louis Bowman lives in a boxing ring—a housing project circa 1968—and is fighting “just to get to the end of the round.” Sharing the ring is his mother, Jeanette Stamps, a ferociously stubborn woman battling for her own dreams to be realized; his stepfather, Ben Stamps, the would-be saviour, who becomes the sparring partner to them both; and the enigmatic Ray Anthony Robinson, the neighbourhood “hoodlum” in purple polyester pants, who sets young Louis’s heart spinning with the first stirrings of sexual longing. Each of them is fighting to be heard, recognized, loved, and appreciated. Lambda Award-winning author Bil Wright has created an unforgettable, vulnerable young man, and tells his story with quirky humour and clear-eyed unsentimentality.